I didn't read it, but with common logic, won't a railroad be a lot faster in transporting people/cargo around instead of making them walk or sit in long, bumpy carriage rides?
From what I could gather it was a main mode of transportation, and it seemed that there were many people (injured?) I am not too sure of that one, but it did seem as if there were multiple people injured and if that was the case then either something could have happened to the railway to cause this "improvement" or something else entirely.and if that is the case I may be missing the whole point of this question. I hopped this helped some.